Apple planned to include CSAM screening technology in iOS 15 but had to delay the feature's launch indefinitely due to strong pressure and a backlash against CSAM that forced the company to pause its plans. It seems that the decision to postpone was a right idea from Apple to calm the atmosphere until a new report appeared that overthrew the feature completely, and perhaps Apple would receive and forget to provide its advantage anymore.
dangerous technique
In a new report, an influential group of 14 internationally recognized security researchers said such schemes (meaning CSS or client-side scanning) are a dangerous technology that expands government surveillance powers. It would be more an invasion of privacy than anything else that has been proposed to weaken the encryption process. Instead of reading the content of encrypted communications, Apple's new feature gives law enforcement the ability to remotely search not only communications but information stored on user devices.
These voices join similar voices, including civil liberties activists, privacy advocates and technology industry critics, who have already warned that these kinds of features threaten basic human rights.
Although the system announced by Apple seemed well-intentioned, its use to check what's inside the device against image databases in the form of digital hash data has alarmed many. After all, if the device could be scanned for one thing, the process could easily be expanded in order to look for other things and this was taken into account as some governments turned out to be working on just that. The cybersecurity field who was studying proposals of this kind before Apple announced its CSAM feature.
The European Union plans to use the Apple feature
Researchers say they began researching that CSS technology before Apple announced in response to moves by European Union leaders to insist on such a system. CSAM also includes scanning for evidence of organized crime and terrorist activity but there is a problem other than privacy that what is seen in some countries as normal behavior is criminalized in others In addition, if Apple is forced to enable its new feature by the European Union to search for Other things and not child abuse images will not be able to resist and will eventually give in and do as they are asked.
Note: Did you know that everyone wants to monitor all crimes except for one crime, which is fraud and tax evasion
Expert Warnings
One big problem that researchers recently warned about is that the plan allows a person's devices to be wiped without any potential cause for anything illegal to happen, and Susan Landau, a professor of cybersecurity and politics at Tufts University, said it's very dangerous. It poses a risk to business, national security, public safety and privacy,” while Ross Anderson, a professor of security engineering at the University of Cambridge, said “Expanding the state’s surveillance powers is already crossing red lines.”
Pandora's box
Experts have warned that these monitoring and control capabilities can be misused by competitors, government agencies, and even by criminals and hackers, and within the employees who implement them, and the opacity of mobile operating systems makes it difficult to verify that the scanning system will only target material whose illegality is indisputable.
Finally, once such a system is in place, it is only a matter of time until criminal entities figure out how to undermine or expand it to discover valuable personal or business data or introduce false positives against certain people. If it opens, all kinds of evil that we don't want will appear.
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